Blender Video Editing: About the Tutorial Text

Here another screenshot from the Blender Video Editing tutorial where you can see more of the actual Quick Start tutorial text. If you want to learn how-to edit video with Blender this text will show you all the basics – inside the .blend file!

Click the image to see a larger version.

This is an interactive tutorial – all things in this .blend file have been arranged in a way that it will be fairly simple to learn all the basics in a very short period of time – no need to have a book or a web page open, you don’t even need video footage for the main part of the tutorial:

Learning the Basics With Colour Strips

All the basics like Navigation – Shorten/Extend – Moving A Clip – Snapping – Cut – Delete (including: selecting, dropping clips; frame counter, “Channels”) are shown with simple colour strips in the first part called “Editing/VSE Basics”– you can read and practise at the same time!

“Questions/Answers”

…is how the second part of the tutorial is called. Here the most common questions new users have when getting started with the Blender VSE are answered. (E.g.: How can I fade-in/fade-out video? How can I export video with sound? Etc.)

Blender VSE: De Facto Platform Independent NLE

This is one of the most interesting, maybe overlooked features of the Blender VSE: the same .blend file can be opened and edited on five different operating systems, e.g. on a Mac, a Windows PC or a laptop running Ubuntu – this is a de facto platform independent NLE! Try to do this with Final Cut Pro… And best of all: Blender is free and open-source – install it on as many PCs as your production requires – no need to buy any license for non-linear video editing (or SFX works). See all the new features the Blender VSE has since Blender 2.46, a good starting point for more information – also points out current limitations and workarounds – is the Using VSE page from the Blender Wiki.

Since Blender works under FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris and Windows the Blender VSE offers free and open-source video editing for almost any platform that an editor, video artist or company might be using. This means you could start working on your old iMac, send the .blend to your co-editor who has a Windows PC and once you get it back you could finish the project on your new Ubuntu workstation – the same .blend can be opened and edited on all platforms!

See all the new features that the Blender VSE offers since Blender 2.46. For more information, including some current limitations and workarounds, see the Blender Wiki: Using VSE.

2D Title Presets: Updated

*Update* This preset is meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here! (Or get a recent version of Blender here.)

*link updated* (v0.1.1a, 15th November 2008)

1) Download the 2D Title Presets .blend – the tutorial (included) now begins with a few quick steps to get started in no time

Tutorials = CC Licensed – Your Work = Yours!

Both .blends/tutorials are (now) distributed under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported) – however you may use these .blends as starting points for your own commercial Blender made projects! Simply remove the tutorial texts (and rename the .blend) before sharing your .blends with others. The license restrictions only apply to the tutorial text and the tutorial as such!

Your editing projects and titles are yours!

If you are an educator, teacher or trainer: you may use these .blends in your classes (e.g. film school, multimedia training etc.) as long as they are distributed in their original form (no changes made) and free of charge.

See the .blends and the CC license for details.

One reason for the restrictions: I plan to update the tutorials, maybe extend them and simply can not support multiple versions. Thanks for understanding.